7 Best Movies To Watch After Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985)
Rebel Moon - Part Two: The Scargiver
My favorite moments in Rebel Moon: Part Two - The Scargiver come during quick breaths before a plunge. In the first, warriors Tarak (Staz Nair) and Milius (Elise Duffy) come to terms with their likely imminent deaths at the hands of a smoke-spewing tank. Having spent years of his life consumed by survivor's guilt, Tarak thought having a cause to die for would be enough. It isn't. He wants to live, but he probably won't. The next best thing is to die fighting alongside a peer like Milius. In the second, Kora (Sofia Boutella) is in the midst of blasting her way through the fearsome dreadnought King's Gaze. After slaying a warrior wielding a high-tech superheated sword, she takes a moment to catch her breath. With some pilfered cloth, she wraps the blade's hilt so she can use it without burning herself. It's a moment of improvisation, providing Boutella a chance to deliver a quieter piece of physical acting that stands in contrast to brawling with a corridor of goons or swordfighting Ed Skrein's Admiral Noble. Continue Reading →
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
The most frustrating thing about Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire isn't that it's stupid. It knows it's stupid; it's banking on that. It's not even that its luster has been eclipsed by Japan's most recent entry in the terrible lizard's decades-long rampage on the cinematic landscape, the now-Oscar-winning Godzilla Minus One. It's that somehow, director Adam Wingard and the team behind the MonsterVerse have forgotten how to be the right kind of stupid, fumbling the formula that 2021's Godzilla vs. Kong captured with surprising charm. (Then again, our assessments of 2021's COVID-era output are innately suspect, considering most of us were just glad to be back at the movies at all.) But the more you settle into the latest entry in Warner Bros. and Legendary's "MonsterVerse" -- the Americanized shared universe of Japanese-sourced kaiju movies that started with 2014's Godzilla -- the more confounding this exercise becomes. The end of the previous film in the series teased a kind of detente between Japan's favorite reptile and Skull Island's favored son, the two working together to take down MechaGodzilla after a movie's worth of preening spats on cargo ships and among the skyline of Hong Kong (no relation). You'd think screenwriters Terry Rossio, Simon Barrett, and Jeremy Slater would double down on the "what now?" of it all: how would these two reluctant allies share the Earth? That might be fun. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire Review (Warner Bros./Legendary) Instead, The New Empire feels like a semi-retread of Godzilla vs. Kong -- actually, scratch that, more like a King Kong movie with a few bits of Godzilla peppered in here and there. Like so many sitcom roommates before them, the pair have drawn a chalk line halfway down the planet and decided to each keep to their own territory. Godzilla protects humanity from rogue Titans on the surface, and in between bouts, he curls up in the Roman Colosseum like a cat bed, one of the film's more charming images. Meanwhile, Kong searches for other giant apes like him down in the Hollow Earth. (Yeah, that exists now.) Continue Reading →
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
There are few names as deeply ingrained in the fabric of American pop culture as Ghostbusters, the action-comedy franchise spawned by Ivan Reitman’s beloved 1984 film. Nonetheless, despite its staggering financial success (netting nearly 300 million against a 25 million dollar budget) and pop culture permeance, Sony has had trouble recapturing the magic in later entries. Neither 1989’s Ghostbusters II, 2016’s Ghostbusters, and 2021’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife have neared the original’s success. Despite that, it seems the Ghostbusters franchise has finally found a sequel concept it’s willing to forge ahead with. The franchise’s latest installment, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, is a direct sequel to Afterlife. It once more reunites Egon Spengler’s (Harold Ramis) children with the three living original Ghostbusters— Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, and Bill Murray. Despite an intriguing subplot for Phoebe, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is an incohesive, unoriginal entry. It coasts on fan service to carry a paper-thin plot and a lukewarm crop of characters, new and old. Bill Murray and Paul Rudd discuss their love of fog machines. (Sony Pictures) Picking up two years after the events of Afterlife, Frozen Empire follows the Spengler family (Carrie Coon, Paul Rudd, McKenna Grace, Finn Wolfhard) to New York City. After the previous film's tradition-breaking decision to unfold in rural Oklahoma, this returns the franchise to its true home. Bankrolled by the uber-wealthy Winston (Hudson) they're back operating out of the old Ghostbusters firehouse. There the Spenglers struggle to juggle ghost-hunting with their interpersonal dynamics. That's all while working to keep the mayor (William Atherton) from shutting the family business. Continue Reading →
Dune: Part Two
Denis Villeneuve finishes his epic two-part adaptation of Frank Herbert's novel with sprawling scope and thorny politics. It's really a miracle that the first of Denis Villeneuve's Dune films penetrated the public consciousness as well as it did. It was released amid a worldwide pandemic; it was an IMAX-ready blockbuster that was simultaneously dropped onto people's streaming subscriptions same-day; it's based on a dense, impenetrable sci-fi novel Villeneuve patiently chose not to wholly adapt in one film. The results, blessedly, were commercial and critical success and a host of technical Oscars the following year. That success was enough to secure Dune: Part Two, a chance for Villeneuve to complete his vision of Frank Herbert's seminal work of political science fiction. Where Part One worldbuilds, Part Two barrels down the road of its inevitable conclusion in satisfying style, even as it makes some noted changes from the novel or any previous adaptations -- some for the better, some for the worse. Continue Reading →
The Marvels
Most films don’t come with homework. The same cannot be said of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s new movie, The Marvels. Unless you’re a devoted MCU fan with an encyclopedic knowledge of both the movies and the Disney+ TV originals, it’s difficult to understand the mechanics of this disastrously convoluted entry in the floundering franchise. It feels like being dropped headfirst into a crossover episode based on three shows you’ve never seen -- mostly because it is. The Marvels kicks off with a bit of genuine visual interest (that never appears again) in the form of hand-drawn comics created by teenage superhero-slash-Captain Marvel fangirl Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani), aka Ms. Marvel. Vellani, who previously appeared as Kamala on the little-seen Disney+ series Ms. Marvel, is a spunky, hilarious teenage heroine whose impressive comedic timing buoys the leaden, disjointed script. She so thoroughly steals the show that it’s disappointing this movie wasn’t just about her; instead, it's a confused mix of storylines involving Kamala, Captain Marvel (Brie Larson), and astronaut Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris, Candyman). It feels like the powers that be made a huge mistake in consigning her story to a poorly publicized streaming original, instead of letting her headline a film on her own. Continue Reading →
Sayen: La cazadora
At the risk of making a "getting a lot of Sorcerer vibes from this" guy out of myself, The Hunted—William Friedkin's 2003 old-master-hunts-rogue-student thriller really does make for a fascinating counterpart to his earlier men-on-a-desperate-mission masterwork. Both delve into the lives of damaged, forlorn, isolated men on perilous quests for deliverance. And both of those quests lead deep into madness. Both pointedly contrast man-made, flame-choked hellscapes (Sorcerer's exploding oil well, The Hunted's secret mission amidst the Kosovo War) with the vast, amoral green of the deep forest (Columbia and Oregon, respectively). Both turn on setpieces that thrill while maintaining a grounded (if not necessarily "realistic") feel and weave surreality in with care. Continue Reading →
F9
At this point, the mechanics of a Fast and Furious movie are no secret. Running on an engine of blistering sincerity, the over-the-top action inevitably finds Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) pulled in for “one last job.” You’ll see a street race populated by women in bikinis. Fancy cars will defy the laws of physics as they inevitably crash, fly, or crash while flying. Roman (Tyrese Gibson) shall vamp and riff to kingdom come. Coronas will be consumed and, in the end, family will emerge victorious. Continue Reading →